


Still Human

by thebasement_archivist



Category: The X-Files
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2000-08-15
Updated: 2000-08-15
Packaged: 2018-11-20 18:56:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11341356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebasement_archivist/pseuds/thebasement_archivist
Summary: Someone's watching Krycek, and doesn't like what he sees.





	Still Human

**Author's Note:**

> Note from alice ttlg, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [The Basement](http://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Basement), which moved to the AO3 to ensure the stories are always available and so that authors may have complete control of their own works. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in June 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [The Basement's collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/thebasement/profile).

 

Still Human by Revenant

Title: Still Human  
Author: Angst!Revenant   
Rating: Not Gen, not PG-13. Depends how sensitive you are.  
Archive: I sincerely doubt anyone'll bother, but if you like.  
Notes: This isn't a story; in fact I doubt it's even long enough to be considered a vignette. I was quite happily writing West Virginia smut when it appeared, and wouldn't let me get on `till it was done, so here it be. It's basically an unbeta'd experiment in the creative use of adjectives. I hate it when I get weird ;o(  
Summary: Someone's watching Krycek, and doesn't like what he sees.

* * *

Still Human

He watches me, silently.

I watch him back, as I do whenever we meet, every time another opportunity to discover how much further he has fallen.

I study that face, its form as familiar to me as the smell of blood by now, even as the details change. I look for the evidence of new crimes layered over old. Ghosts of the past that should somehow be carved and sealed into his flesh.

They say the eyes are the window to the soul, so I look to them to show me his. I want to see guilt or pain, just one honest emotion; even cold indifference would do. Something to convince me that he feels, that he is still human. I need to know that he isn't a monster, that some small remnant of the man he once might have been remains in his tarnished soul.

Eye sockets are gouged deep into his skull in stark gothic contrast to skin as pale and opaque as candle wax. The poor overhead lighting cannot be blamed; it merely accentuates the blurred insomniac greys that have been brushed in under his dark, feathered brows. Puffed and bruised, wine-dark shadows drag down from the inner corners of incongruously wide set and childlike eyes, and cobweb-fine lines track out from their outer corners, delicate, but etched harsh and hard as the toughest steel. Long pitch-dragged lashes frame the dulled whites of his eyes, which are mapped with the red spider paths and blushes of exposed capillaries. The glass green irises are as lifeless as museum caged jade, pulled back into paper thin rims to reveal pupils grown wide in the dim light. 

All these things are signs and symptoms of exhaustion, and maybe even illness, but however hard I look there is no emotion to be read in those eyes. They are as beautiful as emeralds, and as dead.

I have my answers.

I turn away from the mirror, and turn out the light.


End file.
